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| Interview |
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By Cary Sherburne, Senior WTT Editor
WhatTheyThink spent time with MAN Roland’s North American CEO, Yves Rogivue, always an interesting interviewee, to get his perspective on the state of the company and the state of the industry as we approach Print ’05. This two-part interview covers: Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 2 WTT: There were a lot of new presses bought in the boom years of 1997 to 1999 that must be about to start coming off 10-year leases. Will the market be flooded with these used presses as that begins to happen? YR: A lot of presses that were “sold” and placed into the market were unfortunately not really sold, but rather, placed using what I call very creative financing. A lot of those printers are not around anymore and the presses are already back in the market. We are in a new investment cycle now; with people noticing that the economy is a lot better than it was a year ago. But also, printers understand that by replacing two or three older machines with one new machine, they can improve their operations and deliver stronger financial results. I say to people who ask my opinion about buying an older versus a new press: if the older press does not have the automation that allows them to dramatically take cost out of their manufacturing process, then don’t buy it. If it does, and they can’t afford a new press, they have to do what they can. The key is that printers need to lower their cost of manufacturing. They can’t just look at getting the cheapest upfront price; they need to look at the lifecycle cost of a new press and at the corresponding ROI of that investment. That’s a huge difference. WTT: Are older presses coming off of lease headed for Asia and Eastern Europe, or are those markets now demanding new presses and new technologies as well? YR: We do see a lot of used presses going offshore. Frankly, as printers and suppliers, we want to take that capacity out of our market anyway. WTT: You have spoken at length in the past relative to your opinions about dangerous financing practices in the industry. Are you still seeing that occur? YR: We are still seeing a lot of it from what I would categorize as desperate competitors. I don’t know why anyone in his right mind would do this. They are hurting the market by contributing to the price erosion of the printed product, they are directly hurting their healthy customers, and in the end, let’s make no mistake, they are hurting themselves as well because there is no free lunch. I don’t really care that they are hurting themselves, but I do care that they are hurting the market. WTT: Does MAN Roland have an interest in other markets and processes like flexo, packaging, and digital? YR: That is really three different topics. Digital is my favorite. You have two kinds of digital —variable data and short run printing. Today’s offset technology can bring you competitively into very short runs, as demonstrated by companies like VistaPrint which prints average run lengths of only a few hundred on sheetfed offset and even Valassis which prints run lengths into the low thousands on commercial webs. There will be double digit growth in variable data — it is the future. But it represents a miniscule amount of the overall printed pages today. So double digit growth is fantastic, but in absolute terms it is still a very small number. We look at different aspects of the market when we look at where we can predict growth. If you look at the newspaper market, for example, if it moves up one percent, that is mega-tons of additional printed product. Our market intelligence tells us that direct mail is a strong growth segment, as is, by the way, packaging. While book printing runs will be much shorter, there is a lot of variety and growth in that market as well. We give our customers the flexibility to use flexo units inline with our sheetfed presses either in front, in the middle or behind printing units, as applicable. Flexo on its own is not our market. WTT: Where do you see the market going with respect to digital versus offset? YR: We believe that if you want to compete with electronic media, the future is not going to be in the delivery of pleasing color. We feel the future is going to be very high color quality. And buyers are not necessarily going to pay more for it; it will simply be expected. If you want to make a splash and you have a hotel or technology or car you want to sell, there is a big difference between looking at a pleasing printed piece on lower quality paper compared to a really good product that has inline embossing and foiling and other kinds of enhancements that can be done automatically and inline with a properly configured offset press. I do believe that you will see, in the future, sheetfed presses with inkjet variable data on the last unit so that you can combine the quality of offset with the power of variable data in an efficient and productive manner. WTT: How is the DICOWeb going? YR: The technology is unique and I still find it amazing. The challenge stems from the fact that automation in terms of faster make-ready on sheetfed and web presses has increased so dramatically over the last five years. Think about a VistaPrint that produces four jobs per hour, including make-ready, printing and everything in 15 minutes per job; where is the advantage of DICOWeb in that scenario? It will make a lot of sense in an environment where there are no plates or CTP, which is a very narrow niche. I could also see a future need for DICOkits for newspaper presses that would allow the newspaper to delay going to print with the front page for an extra half an hour. Those are the kinds of applications that will make sense for the DICO technology in the future. WTT: As a proponent of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) for print, what would you say is the optimum size of printing plant that can benefit from CIM? YR: Yuval Gurr’s company, CP Printing in Toronto, Canada, is an example of a relative small but dynamic printing company (US$2-3 million) that has benefited from CIM. He and his partner, two young, motivated and energetic people, have a small format MAN Roland press, Agfa CTP, an EFI MIS system and a DocuColor. He has his operation fully interconnected with JDF, and is running a CIM shop. He does no VDP, and he would tell you that his short run cut off between offset and digital is less than 300 sheets. Gurr is a visionary on CIM. You do not need to be a Valassis, which is over a billion in revenues, to benefit from CIM. Any shop can benefit from some level of CIM. The key is: It all starts in your head. WTT: What will your major thrust be for Print 05? YR: It is about CIM. And it is also about “Big Advantages” — size matters, because that allows our customers, web and sheet, to take cost out of their manufacturing environment as described earlier. We need to make our customers more profitable by making them more productive, by integrating equipment and islands of production. If you look at the average PIA/GATF ratios reflecting our industry’s average rates of profitability, it presents a sad picture and we need to change that. We will be showing our technology ranging from small sheetfed presses all the way up to large high tech web equipment, including a world premiere of the 64” MANRoland R-900 XXL with, the first InLine roll sheeter, fully integrated into a real-time Printnet-PECOM network that can help book, commercial and packaging printers to reduce their cost of manufacturing and therefore increase their bottom-lines. That press, by the way, will be delivered to a visionary West Coast printer after the show. If we have caught your interest, come and look us up at PRINT 05, Booth 1245, September 9th – 15th 2005 , in Chicago. WTT: Yves, thanks for talking with us today. We will look forward to seeing you at Print 05, and especially at the special event you are sponsoring with WhatTheyThink’s economic commentator Dr. Joe Webb on Tuesday September 13th at 8:30 AM! For more information, visit www.manroland.com Search the industry's largest archives for Man Roland This Interview was conducted by Cary Sherburne. She can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463. -- Click here to tell us what you think about this premium feature 
Prior to launching her consulting practice, Ms. Cary Sherburne was the Vice President of Marketing Communications and Outsourcing Solutions at IKON Office Solutions. In that capacity, she developed and implemented a branding campaign to build brand awareness for IKON in the marketplace as well as enhance employee pride in the organization, and was responsible for all internal and external communications, including trade shows and events, corporate newsletters, and industry and press relations. In the outsourcing role, she set strategic objectives and priorities for IKON’s product and services portfolio in its Outsourcing businesses, including development of programs and sales support materials for that environment. Sherburne was a Director at CAP Ventures, an internationally known firm specializing in market research and strategic consulting for the digital document and print on demand industry, before joining IKON, where she launched and managed the company’s Document Outsourcing Consulting Service. Her tenure in the printing and publishing industry has also included sales and marketing positions at Xerox Corporation, Indigo America and Bitstream. She is a frequent speaker at industry events and a recognized author. Cary can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463. |
August 10, 2005 -- MAN Roland has been much in the news lately, from its participation in the “